Diamond electro-optomechanical resonators integrated in nanophotonic circuits

Diamond integrated photonic devices are promising candidates for emerging applications in nanophotonics and quantum optics. Here we demonstrate active modulation of diamond nanophotonic circuits by exploiting mechanical degrees of freedom in free-standing diamond electro-optomechanical resonators. We obtain high quality factors up to 9600, allowing us to read out the driven nanomechanical response with integrated optical interferometers with high sensitivity. We are able to excite higher order mechanical modes up to 115 MHz and observe the nanomechanical response also under ambient conditions.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

High-Q optomechanical circuits made from polished nanocrystalline diamond thin films

We demonstrate integrated optomechanical circuits with high mechanical quality factors prepared from nanocrystalline diamond thin films. Using chemomechanical polishing, the RMS surface roughness of as grown polycrystalline diamond films is reduced below 3nm to allow for the fabrication of high-quality nanophotonic circuits. By integrating free-standing nanomechanical resonators into integrated optical devices, efficient read-out of the thermomechanical motion of diamond resonators is achieved with on-chip Mach-Zehnder interferometers. Mechanical quality factors up to 28,800 are measured for four-fold clamped optomechanical resonators coupled to the evanescent near-field of nanophotonic waveguides. Our platform holds promise for large-scale integration of optomechanical circuits for on-chip metrology and sensing applications

Learning From Early Attempts to Generalize Darwinian Principles to Social Evolution

Copyright University of Hertfordshire & author.Evolutionary psychology places the human psyche in the context of evolution, and addresses the Darwinian processes involved, particularly at the level of genetic evolution. A logically separate and potentially complementary argument is to consider the application of Darwinian principles not only to genes but also to social entities and processes. This idea of extending Darwinian principles was suggested by Darwin himself. Attempts to do this appeared as early as the 1870s and proliferated until the early twentieth century. But such ideas remained dormant in the social sciences from the 1920s until after the Second World War. Some lessons can be learned from this earlier period, particularly concerning the problem of specifying the social units of selection or replication

Macro-level Modeling of the Response of C. elegans Reproduction to Chronic Heat Stress

A major goal of systems biology is to understand how organism-level behavior arises from a myriad of molecular interactions. Often this involves complex sets of rules describing interactions among a large number of components. As an alternative, we have developed a simple, macro-level model to describe how chronic temperature stress affects reproduction in C. elegans. Our approach uses fundamental engineering principles, together with a limited set of experimentally derived facts, and provides quantitatively accurate predictions of performance under a range of physiologically relevant conditions. We generated detailed time-resolved experimental data to evaluate the ability of our model to describe the dynamics of C. elegans reproduction. We find considerable heterogeneity in responses of individual animals to heat stress, which can be understood as modulation of a few processes and may represent a strategy for coping with the ever-changing environment. Our experimental results and model provide quantitative insight into the breakdown of a robust biological system under stress and suggest, surprisingly, that the behavior of complex biological systems may be determined by a small number of key components

Microbial production of recalcitrant dissolved organic matter: long-term carbon storage in the global ocean

The biological pump is a process whereby CO2 in the upper ocean is fixed by primary producers and transported to the deep ocean as sinking biogenic particles or as dissolved organic matter. The fate of most of this exported material is remineralization to CO2, which accumulates in deep waters until it is eventually ventilated again at the sea surface. However, a proportion of the fixed carbon is not mineralized but is instead stored for millennia as recalcitrant dissolved organic matter. The processes and mechanisms involved in the generation of this large carbon reservoir are poorly understood. Here, we propose the microbial carbon pump as a conceptual framework to address this important, multifaceted biogeochemical problem.National Basic Research Program of China [2007CB815904]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [40632013/40841023]; SOA project [201105021/DY1150243]; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation ; US National Science Foundation [648116, 0752972, 0851113, MCB-0453993]; French Science Ministry [ANR07 BLAN 016]; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research-Earth and Life Science

XLIII.—On the chylaqueous fluid of the Actini\ue6

Volume: 2Start Page: 417End Page: 41

Towards Alpha Radiation Detection in Aqueous Solution: VLSI Technology Development for Diamond-Silicon Hybrid Sensors

International audienceIn the presented work, we have developed VLSI technology processes for new prototype sensors based on the synthesis of boron doped nanocrystalline diamond (B-NCD) and silicon based commercial detectors. The process is based on commercial passivated implanted planar silicon (PIPS) devices of PD450 and CAM450 types (CANBERRA). A layer of B-NCD of several hundred nanometers thickness and boron concentration up to 1021 atoms/cm3 is grown on the SiOx passivation layer in an ellipsoidal plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) reactor at temperatures from 520-750°C, in hydrogen atmosphere. . The diamond electrode is dry chemically structured and aluminum electrodes are realized before mounting in a three-fold housing for measurements in aqueous solution. The prototype sensors show an alpha spectroscopy resolution of 100 keV for 241Am electroprecipitated from liquid solution